REVIEW : SALT BRIDGE

Producer- Chandan Singh Chaudhary and Abhijit Deonath

Director- Abhijit Deonath

Star Cast- Rajeev Khandelwal, Usha Jadhav, Chelsea Preston Crawford

Genre- Social

OTT Platform- ShemarooMe

Obsolete & Slow to the core!

Rating- **

Jyothi Venkatesh

The film sets out to tackle a subject that is as old as the hills and it is surprising that it has been set against the backdrop of Australia.

Can a married expat Indian man strike a refreshingly different friendship and be a close friend of a foreign woman?

Set in Australia, the film follows the story of Basant (Rajeev Khandelwal), an expatriate who moves to Salt Bridge, a small town in Australia with a 450-strong Indian community, with his wife Lipi (Usha Jadhav) and their son.

The drama starts when Basant , who lives a happy, frictionless life and in a bid to accustom himself to his new surroundings, decides to join a driving school, where he meets Madhu (Preston-Crayford), a New Zealander married to an Indian man.

Both Basant and Madhu hit it off extremely well and become close friends during the 60-day driving course.

However, this friendship raises several eyebrows in the community, with neighbors and acquaintances ostracizing Basant, including his own wife, though he defiantly stands up for his strange bond, which he argues is only platonic to the core.

Though the film dates back to 2019, you wonder whether eye brows could be raised even in a modern small town of Australia when a married man and a woman walk together that too without holding hands.

What holds you back as the film starts streaming on your ShemarooMe OTT platform are the strong story, a riveting background score also by the filmmaker and truly credible performances by each and every actor including Rajeev Khandelwal, who stands apart from the ether actors with his underplayed role, Usha Jadhav, whom has several moments to show her scope as an actress and Chelsea Preston Crawford, who is a delight to watch and emote.

On the whole, all that I can say is that though the wonderful cinematography and the soothingly melodious music makes a good drama on relationships, what spoils the show are the languid pace of editing which leaves a lot to be desired and a wafer thin plot which lacks logic and fails to hold you for a longer time.

Some films are way ahead of time but Salt Bridge is a film which is obsolete in today’s times.